Protecting Audio And Internet Music With Drm

By Alice Pierce

It is not only the films but the entire multimedia products that are vulnerable to the attack by hackers and dishonest copiers. Therefore there is absolute necessity of preventing such unauthorized copy that is causing loss to the legitimate industry of billions of dollars every year. The obvious answer that comes to one’s mind is the digital rights management software that can really come up good in preventing the hacking and copying that is unauthorized.

DRM problems

There are some problems that are associated with any DRM. The discs on which the DRM are installed are most of the times not the standardized CDs and are CD-ROMs instead. That is why they do not have the log types found on the quality CDS. You may not be able to play such CDs at all on your PC. Worse, the PC could even crash while you try to play such discs on them.

Bertelsmann in 2002 was the first Company to use DRM. The new DRM technology was introduced by Sony in the year 2005. The DRM was installed on the user’s computer without notification or even requiring any confirmation from them. When later the vulnerability of the system was detected with such installation Sony was forced to recall millions of CDs from the market. However the Companies had learnt their lesson. It was clearly appreciated that while DRM is essential it cannot violate its own principles by being installed in secrecy. Everything was required to be transparent.

Internet music and DRM

DRM is largely employed by the online music Companies in order to restrict the usages of the music purchased as well as downloaded online. Consumers have a host of options to choose from in buying music online. There are numerous stores that provide such music while each store provides a number of purchasing options. Some of them like the iTunes provide audio CDs online loaded with their Fair Play DRM format.

A unique system has been put in place by the Napster music stores. It offers you subscription based DRM system. You can subscribed to the website and download unlimited music. Once the subscription period is over, all the downloaded musical contents become unplayable. They would remain so till you renew your subscription for online downloads from the site. Similar technologies have also been applied by other leading companies like the Wal-Mart and Sony.

The problems of interoperability

Most of the services that are provided with DRM are not interoperable and compatible to each other. Moreover most of them require some client software to be installed on your system. In addition to such requirements some also require plug-ins without which the software or the program cannot run properly.

And most of them also require you to continue with your subscription to be renewed again and again. Unlike the movie world there has been growing demands on elimination of the DRM on music. Yet you cannot overlook the fact that intruders are unauthorized users and you have to prevent them to protect your lawful interests. In such cases it is only DRM that can serve the purpose by preventing hackers from copying your music online and depriving you of the benefits to be derived.

Article Source: http://contentsource.co.za

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Like document security in case of written materials and pdf document security, you will also require protection of your music cds and web content protection and their regulatory compliance. To learn more about these please log on to this website now.